The People You See in the Workplace
by GreenEyesStaring
Summary: Sequel to "The People You Meet in Bars" - Olivia bumps into someone unexpected while attempting to resume her morning routine in the bullpen. A/O


Technically a sequel to "The People You Meet in Bars" (though I suppose it could stand on its own). This was supposed to be the original ending to the fic, but it got kind of long, so I chopped it in half and decided to post it in two parts.

**Disclaimer: **As always, I don't own them, I just put them in situations that make me laugh.

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_The People You See in the Workplace_

by

**Greeneyesstaring**

The squad room was relatively quiet for a police precinct when Elliot walked into work that morning. He was not surprised to see Olivia's desk still empty, no trace of her arriving evident on its yet uncluttered surface. Munch and his new partner, one Fin Tutuola, were already seated at their desks, talking amicably over stacks of sorely ignored paperwork. Noticing the presence of Elliot, but failing to sense any trace of Olivia, Munch looked up from his conversation to inspect the bullpen.

"What's this?" he asked over the rim of his glasses. "You made it here _before_ Olivia?"

"I left home early," Elliot replied smoothly, draping his coat over his chair and making a beeline for the standing coffee counter. As he tilted the pot of steaming brew into his mug, Elliot nodded toward Captain Cragen's closed office door, which thankfully gave him a reason to change the subject. "The Captain not in yet?"

"No, he's in," Munch replied. "Talking to some legal outfit. Apparently, we're being assigned a new, more permanent ADA."

"What happened to Carmichael?" Elliot asked, surprised.

"Inexplicably reassigned," Munch said simply, eyebrows raising. "I was just telling my partner here how the criminal justice system likes to shuffle its pawns on a regular basis. First it's the ADAs, then it's us. You'll never see it coming, my friend."

Fin looked perplexedly up at Elliot and offered a casual nod in Munch's direction, "Does he ever, you know, _shut up_?"

Elliot replied with a giant smile that made Fin visibly cringe. "Munch, shut up? Hah. You know he sent his old partner up in Baltimore into early retirement with that yap of his, right, or hasn't he told you?"

While Fin sunk further into his desk, resignation evident in his posture, Munch shot Elliot a reproachful look through his tinted lenses and turned to his paperwork. Elliot thought he heard Munch mutter something about a certain Stanley, but couldn't be sure. Adding another packet of sugar to his mug, Elliot swirled the black bile around and took a drink. The liquid was as foul as ever as it sloshed into his stomach, but hit the spot only like precinct coffee could, warming his cold insides. "Ah, nothing like a hot cup of rat piss to wake you up in the mornings."

"You said it," came Olivia's voice from the other end of the room. Elliot turned his head as casually as he could manage, not wanting to betray the eagerness he was embarrassed for feeling, and watched as Olivia strode casually into the bullpen and slid into her desk chair. She gave him a good morning look very similar to the ones she gave him every morning, when they weren't sharing a secret between them, and Elliot was disappointed when there was nothing telling in Olivia's gaze. He found himself trying very, very hard to not pull up a chair next to Olivia's desk and ask her spill about her previous evening like some sixteen-year-old girl at the after-prom sleepover. "Elliot, can you spare a cup?"

"One hot cup of Joe coming right up," Elliot said, a little exaggeratedly, which did not go unnoticed by the observant Munch. Elliot fixed Olivia's coffee with one sugar and little cream, like he knew she liked it, and brought it to Olivia's desk. He placed it firmly on the desktop and lingered unnecessarily by her chair before walking around the desk and settling into his own seat. "Drink up. I hear the worse it tastes, the better it is for you."

"Excellent," Olivia said, taking the mug in her hands and catching a whiff of its swirling, black contents. A little lost in her own mind, Olivia did not notice Elliot's inquisitive gaze from across the desks until she looked up to confront her paperwork. The look on his face was, to put it mildly, comparable to that of an excitable puppy waiting for his owner to pull the doggie treat out of its bag. As much sense as it made that Elliot would just have to sit on his curiosity and wait until they found some privacy to hear about her most recent escapades with a certain blonde bar patron, Olivia found Elliot's dying interest in the matter, coupled with the situation not lending itself to soothe his curiosity, quite amusing. Smiling to herself, Olivia did her best to ignore him by pretending to be enthralled by the stack of manila folders she had just removed from her drawer, and set on the desk. "What's the Captain up to?"

"Talking to the new ADA," Fin replied.

"New ADA?" Olivia asked. She absentmindedly swirled the coffee around in the mug, steam rising to her face as it was released from the beverage. "It's shuffle season already?"

"A little early," Munch said. He leaned forward in his chair, almost whispering into the small isle between the four desks, "Between you and me, I think this may have something to do with our evaluations."

"You think maybe the shrink sensed one of us had bad rapport with Carmichael?" Elliot asked. Further speculation was cut short by the familiar call to arms that the detectives had learned to heed,

"People,"

It was Captain Cragen from the back of the bullpen. Uniformly, the squad rose at the sound of his voice, and Olivia, back turned to the Captain, brought her coffee mug to her lips and took a confident sip.

She caught the sudden change in Elliot's face over the rim of her mug too late: his eyebrows jumped into his hairline, his eyes flew open in wide surprise, and he his jaw literally dropped. Elliot offered Olivia the slightest, almost nonexistent, nod of his head. The message: _Turn around, but be smart about it. _Mug still at her mouth, Olivia turned on her heel and faced three people: Donald Cragen, Arthur Branch, and, a pair of captivating cobalt eyes.

Olivia's reaction was knee-jerk, unstoppable, and as much a gut reaction as was ducking at the sound of a bullet being fired. At the sight of the blonde, the considerable amount of coffee in Olivia's mouth sprayed indiscriminately forth, splashing the front of Alexandra Cabot's white designer suit top like brown paint splattered onto a clean canvass. The ADA, along with Cragen and Branch, took a few steps backward in surprise and self-preservation, then looked up, perplexed beyond belief, at the brunette detective.

_You have _got _to be shitting me._

The disdainful look coming from Branch and the increasingly furrowing brow of her captain prompted Olivia to correct herself as soon as possible. In an attempt to save as much as her posterity as she could after spitting up all over a beautiful woman for no apparent reason, Olivia held her mug of coffee away from her body, as if it were something truly heinous, and rambled rather stupidly, "Hot coffee. I am so sorry. I burned my tongue and just couldn't take it. I really am sorry. Please, I'll take care of the dry cleaning bill. That is some _hot_ coffee."

"Sorry, Liv, I should have told you it was fresh off the hotplate," Elliot , now somewhat composed, remarked uselessly from behind his desk. "My bad."

"Yeah, your bad," Olivia replied for the sake of not allowing an awkward silence to settle between the persons present. "I can't feel my tongue. Damn it, El, I won't be able to taste anything for days."

A perplexed expression crossed over Cragen's face, his detective senses informing him that the conversation between his detectives had not, in fact, really been about hot coffee, but nevertheless, he proceeded with what he had set out to do. "If we're all done learning how to _not_ drink hot beverages," Cragen began with a stern, almost disapproving look at Olivia, "I'd like to introduce our newest ADA, Alexandra Cabot. She will be taking over for ADA Carmichael starting today and will handle all of our cases. Ms. Cabot, these are my detectives, Elliot Stabler, John Munch, Fin Tutuola, and - the usually competent - Olivia Benson."

The wry smile that crossed Alex's lips was not lost on Olivia, who could feel herself begin to blush, and could only hope to blame it on the hot coffee. Alex looked relatively un-phased for someone wearing another person's coffee as an accessory, and smiled. "Not to worry, I've had worse welcomes; working within the law, one comes to realize quickly that your profession is not often appreciated by most people."

"I'm sure Olivia will find a way to show you just how much she appreciates you," Cragen said firmly. He emphasized the importance of his statement with another look in Olivia's direction. She, in turn, nodded sternly at her captain; Cragen had always put importance on fostering a healthy relationship between his precinct and the District Attorney's office, and never appreciated any attempts to undermine it. As he walked back toward his office with Branch in tow, Cragen added, "And she will be _more_ than _happy_ to do it."

"Oh, something tells me she will be, Captain," Alex said. The smirk that erupted in the ADA's cobalt eyes and spread warmly to her lips as she eyed Olivia was unmistakable, irresistible, and impossible to ignore. She took a step forward, and caused Olivia to take one back, breaching all etiquette of workplace personal space in the process. "However, I think it's best to wait until that tongue of yours is in proper working order before you try showing me _any _kind of appreciation."

The clatter of what could only be Munch's cup of pens met Olivia's ears, as did Elliot's sad attempt to disguise his snort, and consecutive burst of laughter, as a cough.

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